Indiana Jones and the Tomb of Bast
by Stratagem
Summary: When an ancient talking cat visits when Mutt is stuck babysitting his little sister, the Jones family is tossed into another adventure, this one taking them all over the world to stop a dangerous curse. If Mutt finds romance on the way, all's good. HIATUS
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own the Jones family or the Indiana series

Disclaimer: I don't own the Jones family or the Indiana series. I own my ideas and my OCs, and that's about it. (smiles) Please excuse any historical or geographical inaccuracies; I'm trying to do research yet keep myself amused at the same time.

**A/N: It's 1963, six years since the events of KOTCS, and Mutt's finished college by now; he's twenty-five. Also, there's been a small addition to the Jones family.**

_**Indiana Jones and the Tomb of Bast**_

**Chapter 1**

When Indiana Jones had called saying that he had found a new adventure, Mutt had thrown on his worn leather jacket, hopped on his Harley, and broke the speed limit all the way to his parents' house across town. It was an understatement to say that he was ready to out of New Britain and back in the field. Kelly Van Fuller, a senior at Marshall College and his most recent ex, had been giving him hell for the past few weeks by showing up whenever he had a date, no matter where or when it was. Hell, Mutt would have gone looking for the petrified shit of King Arthur if it meant getting away from her.

When Mutt pulled up in front of the good-sized townhouse, he carefully parked his motorcycle in the garage and hurried inside, throwing his keys on the counter as he ran through the kitchen.

"I'm here!" he shouted, thundering toward the library study where he expected to find his old man. He rushed through the cluttered hallways to the library, his normally slicked back hair sticking up every which-a-way thanks to riding without a helmet. Mutt looked around rapidly, his hazel gaze darting from desk to bookshelf to bust to ancient sword and finally back to desk. Where the hell was Pops?

"That was slower than I expected," a familiar voice drawled from behind him. He turned around to see his dad standing in the doorway, a smug smirk on that wrinkled face of his. The old guy was clean-shaven and all dressed up like some overgrown penguin, complete with a tailcoat. That was a new one. "Did you have to take your training wheels off your bike or something?"

Mutt's mouth twisted wryly at the good-natured ribbing. "No, I had to stop and pick up your new walker for you, remember?" He picked up a large geode paperweight from Indiana's desk and tossed it from hand to hand. "So, what'd you find? Where is it? Just tell me that it's really far away. And what's with the penguin suit?"

Indiana rolled his eyes at the questioning and walked to his desk, snatching the paperweight from Mutt's hands as he passed by. Setting the geode back in place, he swept his hand across the desk, eyes searching for something.

Mutt stared at him expectantly. "Hey, are you going senile or something, old man? I'm asking you questions; answers would be great. Sort of expected."

Indiana did not look up from the desk. "What are you griping about, kid?" Addressing people by anything other than their birth name was a genetic flaw in the Jones' DNA.

The oldest Jones was busy going through his desk drawers as if it was his newest dig. "Aha! There you are, you stupid, little, useless…" He swiped something small out of a drawer and put it on the table. Mutt narrowed his eyes when he realized they were cufflinks. Something suspicious was going on here…

Mutt turned his head at the sound of someone running through the house, bare feet slapping against the wooden floors. He grinned and quickly moved behind the door as a petite five-year-old girl ran through the open doorway. Indiana noticed the movement but did not say anything.

"Daddy!" Christine Anna Jones exclaimed, out of breath from her romp through the house. Her dark brown eyes were wide and excited, and her cherubic face was smudged with dirt from the garden. "I been in China, excamavating!"

"I think you mean excavating," Indiana said, but he gave his daughter a warm smile. "Did you find anything?"

She nodded, sending her waves of amber hair into her face. "Yep, I founds an am'let." She held up Marion's favorite gold pendant, letting it glimmer in the electric light. Like Christine, the piece of jewelry was covered in dirt and blades of grass. The kid had a bad habit of taking things from the house, burying them in the backyard and then digging them up a few days later as 'akmelodgecal arfacts.'

Indiana nodded gravely. "Well, hurry up and bring it here so I can get a good look at it. For some reason, I bet your mother will really like this one."

Obliging toward her father, Christine darted toward the desk. Before she could take four steps, Mutt leaped out from behind the door and snatched her up in his arms.

"Mutt!" The girl shrieked with laughter he threw her into the air and then caught her on the descent.

"Chrissy!" he replied in a falsetto voice to tease her.

"Don't copy me," she warned, her sunshine smile changing swiftly into a dangerously cute pout. "'s not nice." Mutt grinned at her as he spun her around so she was straddling his hip.

"Mean? Me?" he said, a practiced hurt look leaping to his face.

"Yep, you," she said, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed a sloppy kiss to his cheek. "But I like you even when you mean." Mutt made a face, mostly to show his dad that he was not becoming emotional. Inwardly, he was warmed by his baby sister's sweetness. Chrissy was not always so kind, and he had the bruised shins to prove it.

Indiana picked up the cufflinks and walked out from behind his desk, deftly attaching the cufflinks to his shirt. He nodded to Mutt, that stupid smug smirk back on his face. "Great, you found your adventure. Good boy."

"Huh?" Mutt said, still confused. Chrissy giggled and grinned at him, and Mutt's face fell as he caught on. "Oh, what, no, Dad! No way!" Mutt put Chrissy on the ground and scowled at Indiana. "I'm not babysitting tonight, I've got a date. And you're a lousy, stinking liar."

"I'm certain your motorcycle can reschedule, Junior," Indiana replied, not missing a beat as he took the pendant from Chrissy's hand. "Thanks, princess." She beamed at him with complete adoration. She was daddy's girl, and everyone knew it. Chrissy was more comfortable in a crypt in England with her dad than shopping for dresses with her mother any day.

"Doggy, you gots to stay with me," Chrissy said, using the nickname she come up for Mutt when she was a toddler. "Mommy and Daddy gonna go to dinner. You gonna play with me." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a toad. He croaked sullenly and lay still in her small, outstretched hands. "Here, you play with Goggles. He's a good froggy."

Mutt looked from his smiling, amphibian-holding little sister to his smirking, self-satisfied father and did the only thing he could think of. "MOOOOOM!"

He stormed out of the room, down the hall, and grabbed the end of the stairs' banister. He heard Chrissy and Indiana follow him, but he really did not care what they did right now. "MOOOOM!" he yelled up the stairs, annoyance and anger clear in his voice, "Mom! Come down here!"

"I'm coming, Mutt, give me a second," Marion called from her and Indy's room. "I can't find my shoes…"

"Goggles wants to play with you, Mutt!"

"I don't have a second, Mom! Come down here!"

"Don't bother your mother," Indiana said, shaking his head at Mutt. "She's trying to get ready."

"Well, someone better get unready so they can watch Chrissy," Mutt said. He stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest. "It'd be irresponsible of you guys to leave her in the house all alone."

"Yes, that's why you're here," Indiana said. He laughed at the put-out expression on Mutt's face and ruffled Chrissy's hair. "I don't think Mutt wants to play with Goggles right now, sweetheart. Maybe you should go put him back outside."

"But then the kitty might eat him," she said, clutching the toad to herself. It gave a distressed meep and puffed up to pretend dead.

"What kit…cat?" Mutt asked. He glared at his father accusingly. "You guys got a cat?"

"No," Indiana started, but the grandfather clock at the end of the hall chimed, and the sentence ended in a low curse. "Marion!" he shouted, "Marion, we're going to be late for the banquet!"

"I told you, I'm coming!" There was the noise of Marion flinging things around the bedroom and slamming closet doors. "Didn't you hear me say that two seconds ago?!"

"That was when Junior asked you, now I'm asking you."

"The name's Mutt! And you wouldn't even let me have a dog while I was here. Why does Chrissy get a cat?"

"Marion! Get down here!"

"You Jones men, you're all the same. Pig-headed, demanding, and complete whiny brats!" Marion shouted before slamming the bedroom door.

Indiana made a face. "Come on, Marion! Don't make me have to add tardy to that list."

"Don't lump me in with him, Mom. I've got an actual complaint, and I'm not whining. Unlike Pops here…"

"Junior, don't start with me right now."

"I'm not starting anything, I'm just not doing it."

Christine tugged at her father's shirtsleeve with one hand while keeping a death-grip on the toad with the other. "Don't let the kitty kill Goggles, Daddy! It don't like Goggles."

"I'm certain the cat doesn't, honey. Now just go put him outside, please."

"Oh," Mutt said, leaning against the banister, his arms still crossed over his chest. "And just because Chrissy is five and I was nineteen when I lived here doesn't mean you can treat her differently than me. We're both your kids, or did you forget that, Jones Sr.?"

Upstairs, Marion threw open the door so she could shout at her husband. "Hey! I want you to know that I'll add whatever I like to that list, Indiana Jones! I might even add divorced if you keep yelling at me."

Indiana pulled his hands over his face in exasperation. "I'm only yelling because I can't be heard over the damn kids!"

"They're _your_ damn kids! Handle it!"

"He'll eat him, Daddy! You don't care…" Chrissy started a whimpering sob. She let go of her father's sleeve and ran up the stairs before he could do anything to stop her.

"Nice going, Pops," Mutt said, shaking his head, "Now Chrissy's crying."

"This isn't my fault, kid."

"What did you two do to Chrissy?!" Marion shrieked as her daughter ran into the bedroom, tears starting to streak her dirt-stained face.

"Nothing!" Indiana and Mutt yelled in unison. They looked at each other and glared, annoyed at their similarities.

"You know what?" Mutt said, pushing away from the banister, "You shouldn't have tricked me into babysitting. So I'm going on my date to teach you a lesson about how you should treat your kids."

A strong arm across his chest stopped him from going anywhere. "No, you're not." Before Mutt could protest, Indiana gave a heavy sigh, "Hey, kid, I would've asked you, but I knew you would come up with a reason to say 'no.' Babysitting on a Friday night wasn't exactly a fun thing to when I was your age either."

"You were my age?" Mutt snorted. "When was that, the Paleolithic era?"

"Ha-ha," the elder Jones said, rolling his eyes. "But look, if you'll just watch Chrissy tonight, I'll make it up to you soon, all right?"

"How?" Mutt asked, narrowing his eyes at Indiana. Indiana shrugged and straightened his tie.

"I'll come up with something. Just trust me."

"Huh, that's asking a lot," Mutt grumbled, leaning back against the wall, the back of his head resting between an African tribal mask and an Italian masquerade half-mask. A smirk settled on his face before he leveled his hazel eyes at his father. "Toss in the bucks for a new set of tires, Daddio, and we might call it a deal."

Indiana growled and ground his teeth for a few long moments then gave a tight nod. "Fine, but you're getting a helmet too."

"I don't do helmets. Hat hair's hell, remember?" Mutt said, quoting one of her personal mottos. Indiana laughed and ruffled Mutt's hair.

"Can't be much worse than it is already," he said, then tilted back his head in a shout before Mutt could retort, "Marion, let's go, woman!"

While Mutt hurriedly tamed his hair with his ever-present comb, Marion stomped down the stairs, making a point to hit each stair as if she had a personal vendetta against it. Her high heels clacked in tune with her annoyance. Chrissy was balanced on her hip, and she buried her face in her mother's shoulder when she saw Indiana. In her hand, Goggles croaked in desperation before going silent again.

"I said I was coming, Jones!" Marion said, come to a peeved halt on the bottom step. She resituated her hold on Chrissy and glared at him with her stormy blue eyes. "I know you heard me when I was screaming at you."

Indiana gave Mutt a long-suffering look before grabbing Marion and pulling her off the bottom step. Before she could protest, he pressed his lips against hers in a silencing kiss. Three things happened at once: Marion's anger lessened, Mutt gagged, and Chrissy screeched her protest. Chrissy broke her parents' kiss by shoving her father away from her mother and wriggling down to the ground.

"Ew! Gross," she said, scrunching her nose and dashing toward Mutt, who she knew would share her opinion.

"Completely," Mutt added, mirroring her facial expression. He looked down at his sister. "Be glad I'm saving you from that for a few hours. I know you're probably mentally scarred from being around it all the time."

"You're staying?" Christine asked. She put Goggles in her pocket again and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

"Yep, kiddo," he said, grinning at her. "You're stuck with me for the night."

"Yay!" Christine exclaimed, and she wrapped her arms around his legs, "We gets to have lots of fun, right, Mutt?"

"Of course," Mutt said, smirking past her at his parents before returning her excited smile, "We're going to take a ride on my motorcycle, and then go down to the Foxy Kitten Den before picking up some beer down at Dockside."

"Nifty," Chrissy said, eyes glistening at the thought of doing what her older brother considered fun.

"Mutt!" Marion exclaimed, tapping her foot on the ground.

"Just kidding, Mom. Except about the beer part; I'm thirsty."

"Very funny, kid," Indiana said. He shook his head and gave a sweeping motion to the house. "Usual rules. Dinner at seven, bath at eight, in bed by nine. We're reading Grimm's Fairytales in French; it's on her bed stand."

"I think I could've found it," Mutt said. He jerked his thumb at the clock. "Aren't you guys going to be late?"

Indiana let out a hiss and grabbed Marion's wrist. "Car, now," he snapped, dragging her toward the door. He bent down as they passed Chrissy and gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. "See you when we get back, princess."

Marion tugged her wrist out of Indiana's grip so she could hug her daughter. "Oooo, love you, Chrissy," she said, snuggling the girl until Indiana tugged her hand again. "We'll be back soon. Be good for your brother." She stood up and kissed Mutt on the cheek. He made a face but did not wipe the kiss away. "You be good to your sister, too."

"Oh, and here I was planning on feeding her Jalapeño peppers," he said. He grinned at Marion when her expression said she wanted to smack him, and Marion sighed.

"We'll be back by ten. See you then," Marion said, brushing her hand against her oldest's arm.

Mutt and Chrissy followed their parents to the kitchen door. Indiana practically shoved Marion out the door before turning around to pin both of his children with a steely-eyed, no-nonsense look.

"Behave," he said, "Or else."

Both of them stared at him, neither promising to obey nor outwardly rebelling. Indiana seemed to take that as a good sign and closed to door behind him with a final jerk. Mutt glanced at Chrissy, who was sitting at the kitchen table, and the five-year-old beamed an innocent smile at him.

"Wanna play dress-up?"

**A/N: I'll get into the real plot in the next chapter, and I should update at least once a week. Thanks for reading the first chapter; pictures of the OCs in this story can be found in my profile. **


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own the Jones family or the Indiana series. I own my ideas and my OCs, and that's about it. (smiles) Please excuse any historical or geographical inaccuracies; I'm trying to do research yet keep myself amused at the same time.

**A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, they are incredibly appreciated! If I have not reviewed at least one of your stories yet, I will get right on that. (thumbs up)**

_**Indiana Jones and the Tomb of Bast**_

**Chapter 2**

Mutt managed to talk his way out of dress-up by promising Chrissy that she could play with anything she wanted to in Indiana's study. Of course, that meant he spent the next couple hours making sure she did not cut herself on a sword, break that fragile, old African talisman, or rip up any of his dad's ancient treasure maps, but it was worth it in his opinion. God forbid he had to put on one of Chrissy's tiaras or circlets and pretend to have tea with Athena, her teddy bear, or Indigo, her stuffed red lion. The last time he had done that his parents had come home early, and Indiana had had material to tease him about for the next six months.

"Chrissy," Mutt said, "aren't you tired of playing yet?" They were currently going through one of the cabinets under the bookshelf, pulling out things Indiana had stored down there.

Chrissy had a glistening, nearly perfect Roman helmet on her head. It was a reproduction of the Helm of Mark Antony, an artifact Indiana had recovered from Indonesia a couple years back. The museum had given the reproduction to him as a gift, but Indiana did not have much use for fake artifacts, so in the cabinet it had gone.

"Nope," Chrissy said, shaking her head. The rather large helmet fell over her eyes, but she quickly righted it. "I like playing in here."

"I'm sure you do," Mutt said. The destruction in the room made that quite apparent. "But it's dinner time, and I bet Mom left us something at least decent in the fridge."

Marion was no master chef, but her cooking wasn't awful, at least not anymore. Years of studying under Oxley, a perfectly good cook, had done her some real good, and she no longer burnt things like bread, casseroles, or ice cream. Mutt always tried to forget the fateful 4th of July incident, but that smoldering pile of blackened cream was always lurking in the back of his mind when his mother decided to cook.

"Macaroni and cheese!" Chrissy exclaimed, remembering what Marion had left for them. She leapt up, helmet bouncing wildly. "I'm hungry, let's go!" She grabbed her brother's hand and tugged on him, trying to get him to follow her.

Mutt pulled the helmet off her head and put it on the shelf. "Shouldn't we clean up first?" he asked. He eyed the chaos that had once been his dad's study with an apprehensive eye. If Indiana came home early, he would skin Mutt and use his hide as a doormat. Not something Mutt really wanted to experience.

Chrissy shook her head. "We can clean laters, promise. I'm hungry." She looked up at him with plaintive brown eyes, and he sighed. It was impossible to say no to those eyes.

"Fine, but you're not getting out of this. I'm not a maid."

"Nope, you be butler," Chrissy said smartly. The trademark Jones smirk looked positively frightening on her young face, or at least it did to Mutt.

"Hardy har har, kiddo," he said, roughly ruffling her golden wavy locks. He shoved her toward the door. "All right, go wash up. I'll reheat the macaroni."

"One second!" Chrissy raced over to the desk and snatched Goggles the toad out of a Navajo-woven basket. Mutt imagined that it looked at him with sorrowful, pleading eyes before it was stuffed into Chrissy's pocket, its temporary home. Or prison, if you looked at it from the toad's point of view.

"Don't you think you need to put that toad outside where it belongs?" Mutt asked as he followed Chrissy out of the messy study. Chrissy skipped along in front of him, but he had to take smaller steps to keep from running her over.

"The kitty will eat Goggles if I put 'im back."

"You don't have a cat, Chrissy," Mutt said, rolling his eyes. His sister had a good imagination, so she had probably created a cat as an imaginary friend. Not that he approved; a cat could not be a worse playmate for Chrissy. His sister turned around and glared at him.

"It's not my kitty!" Chrissy said. "It's not a nice kitty. Goggles is better." She patted her pocket and whipped back around.

"Fine, fine, fine," Mutt said, holding up his hands for peace.

They walked into the kitchen, Chrissy leading and Mutt following. Mutt headed for the fridge while Chrissy pranced over to the sink. She pulled a bright red wooden step from a space between the cabinets and the fridge and nudged in front of the sink. She climbed up on the step, turned on the sink and started washing her hands with a bar of white soap. Under her breath, she was humming The Kingsmen's 'Louie Louie.'

Mutt started whistling along with her as he pulled a casserole dish of macaroni and cheese out of the fridge. It was a catchy song, one of the most popular ones this year. Mutt flipped on the oven, and as it heated up, he put the porcelain dish into it.

"Chrissy, get a couple of forks, will you?" Mutt asked as he opened a cabinet over the counter.

"'kay." Chrissy put her footstep back in its place by the fridge and went over to fish the forks out of one of the drawers.

Grabbing a couple of plates from the cabinet, Mutt put them on the small kitchen table and turned around to check on the macaroni and cheese. He nearly had a heart attack when he saw a large, tan feline sitting on the stove top, its triangular head cocked to one side as it regarded him with a bored stare.

"JESUS!" Mutt shouted, jumping back from the stove, hand on his chest above his heart. Maybe that would keep it from exploding.

"Huh?" Chrissy turned around on her heel and saw the cat. "Bad kitty!" she screeched. She put both hands over the pocket with Goggle in it and yelled at the cat. "Get out!"

The cat awarded her by licking its chest and right foreleg.

Mutt's heart raced in his chest. Cat. God, anything but a cat. He hated cats. A lot. More than he cared for anyone to know.

He did the first thing that came to mind and stupidly chunked one of the plates at the cat. There went Marion's good china. The feline nimbly jumped out of the way and landed on the counter beside the sink as the plate shattered, sending shards of china everywhere.

"Scat, cat!" Mutt shouted. He threw the other plate and it met the same fate as the first as the cat moved on to the fridge. Mutt started panicking. "GET! BE GONE! DIE!"

The cat ignored him completely, and Mutt felt like hyperventilating.

"Chrissy, stay back, it may be rabid!" It had to be to come into the house like this. Normal wild cats did _not_ do things like that. And this cat looked weird, like a mutant or something.

It was a tawny and lithe beast, with sharply defined features etched in black. White whiskers sprouted from its cheeks and tuffs of long black hair came off the tops of its ears. It was the weirdest, ugliest cat Mutt had ever seen, and Mutt had seen a lot of ugly cats. He HATED cats.

"I'll getta broom!" She ran down the hallway toward the broom closet.

"No, just, wait!" His hands fidgeted in the air as if he could not decide what to do with them. As Chrissy ran down the hall, he put his hands behind his head and yelled his frustration. The cat watched him like he was the newest sideshow at the circus. A very dull and unexciting sideshow.

Mutt reached for something else to throw at the cat, and this time he held up a salt shaker shaped like a rooster. Why didn't his mom keep out knives or meat cleavers or something for times like this?! Whatever. He pulled his hand back and prepared to throw the salt shaker.

That was when the cat spoke in a distinctly male, tenor voice with a Middle Eastern accent.

"I somehow believe that this meeting would go better if you refrained from throwing kitchenware at me."

The salt shaker fell to the floor, but luckily it did not break. Mutt stared at the cat and then shoved his knuckles into his mouth and whined. Hazel eyes as wide as baseballs stared at the talking animal. That…that wasn't possible.

"Do be reasonable," the cat said. He licked its paw again. "I hate it when people act hysterically. As you are."

Mutt stepped back from the stove, toward the door that led to the hall. Oh, God, it's possessed, it's a possessed cat, a demon cat, I hate catshatecatshatecats. HATE. Not afraid though. Not afraid of cats. But haaaaate them.

"I gotta broom!" Chrissy ran back into the kitchen, waving a broom that was taller than herself in front of her.

The cat glanced at her and sighed. "Child, I do not think it would be wise to strike me with that."

Chrissy's eyes grew wide, and she gaped at Mutt. "The kitty talked…"

"I know, it's a demon!" he yelled. "Get away from it, Chrissy. Go, save yourself!" He waved his hands at his sister, hoping she would throw down the broom and run for safety. At least if he died, he would die knowing that he had saved his little sister.

"I don't wanna go." She was now looking at the cat and grinning. "I wanna play with the kitty."

God, why?! "Chrissy! No! I'm in charge! And you don't play with demons, especially not demon cats!"

"I am _not_ a demon," the cat said. He looked at Mutt with bored golden eyes. "Where is Indiana Jones? Certainly, you are not him."

Mutt took another step back and watched the cat uncertainly. You could never be too cautious with cats.

"Look," Mutt snapped, "if you have something against him, fine, but leave me and my sister out of it. Just take your little evil self and get out of here."

The cat sighed and bunched its muscles beneath him. Without warning, it leaped through the air and landed on Mutt's shoulders. The cat popped its claws out and held them to Mutt's throat. Mutt could each one of those tiny needle points jabbing into the skin over his bobbing Adam's Apple.

"If you know where he is," the cat hissed, "I think it is in your best interest to tell me."

Mutt was sure that the cat said more. However, didn't hear it since he fell to the floor like a puppet with his strings cut, and everything went black with unconsciousness.

**A/N: I thought that since Indy hated snakes, and Henry S. hated rats, Mutt should continue in the family tradition and have a phobia as well. :-)**


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